Team WHAT? !
by Lucillia
Summary: Sam and Dean are just vessels right? Right?
1. Prologue: Gabriel's Unease

Gabriel frowned as he watched the two Hunters walk out of the auditorium believing that they'd killed him. Sam and Dean Winchester had always pinged oddly on his radar. He hadn't known why that was however until he was up close to the boys for the first time in their lives, testing the two of them whom the Apocalypse would be centered around. The reason they struck him as being off was because somewhere in a dim corner of his mind they read as Lucifer and Michael to him for some strange reason.

Perhaps it was because the two were destined to become Lucifer and Michael's vessels...


	2. Baby Angels

In the year before Sam was born, John and Mary's marriage had started to get rocky. The start of their lives together had been marked by incredible tragedy, but they had managed to pull through and grow stronger together through the years that followed, including the nearly five years of trying before they had Dean. That year however, it was beginning to look like they were heading towards divorce as habits that the other had found endearing in the beginning just became annoying. The main reason for it however probably had to do with the fact that every time John had tried to get Dean to do something, the boy who had just started speaking in coherent sentences would say "I don't have to listen to you, you're not my dad!". This rather stung John because he'd suffered an injury during the war in Vietnam and had been told that it would be unlikely that he would have any children, hence him being somewhat wary of the miracle of Dean's existence.

If Dean hadn't looked so much like he had as a baby and as a toddler, albeit with much lighter hair, and if Dean had had a different blood type when he'd had him tested, he would have divorced Mary then and there. However, Dean resembled him to a degree, and they had the same blood type, so he couldn't rule out Dean not being his child as the doctor hadn't been a hundred percent certain that he couldn't have children. He wouldn't leave Dean if there was a chance that the boy was actually his son.

Since the private investigator that he had hired hadn't found any evidence of infidelity on Mary's part whatsoever, John was less wary of the new miracle that would be arriving when Mary had informed him that she was pregnant once more after nearly three years of trying for another child. With this news, he relaxed, believing that the doctor who had seen to him after he'd been injured had been wrong.

After Sam was born, Dean quit going through his "You're not my dad" phase, as the boy who had been far more attached to Mary than to him had found someone new to latch onto. That new person being Sam whom Dean loved absolutely and unconditionally. Dean had pretty much fallen in love with Sam in the instant he'd first laid eyes on his baby brother at the hospital shortly after he was born. Every day after that was all about Sam.

As the years since Mary's death passed, Dean became an obedient and loving son. The one Dean was most loyal to however was his little brother Sammy.

When Sammy was three, he too went through a "You're not my dad" phase. Sam's was different however. Rather than refuse to listen to him, Sam had commented on how glad he was that he wasn't his father since his father hated him and locked him up. This had gotten him some odd looks when Sam had said that to him in front of witnesses.

At this point, John wondered if it was a phase that all toddlers went through, much like that sticking everything they could get their hands on in their mouths phase they went through when they were babies.

At the end of the eighties however, John decided to double check with a new test that involved something called DNA. When the results showed that both Sam and Dean were his children, he put their "You're not my father" phases out of his mind as something childish. He was their father after all, the exceedingly expensive tests had proven it.

In January 1990, an angel who couldn't take it anymore quietly fell, landing in a small town called Windom, Minnesota, and a woman who had been told a year earlier that she couldn't have children was surprised to discover that she was expecting a bundle of joy as a result of a one night stand she'd had with a guy she'd met at work.

Years passed, years in which Dean became the obedient son and Sam the rebellious one. Years in which Sam and Dean grew very close, drifted apart, and grew close once more after Sam suffered a loss and went back on the road with his brother. Years in which John died, Sam and Dean became inseparable, and Dean willingly died for his brother.

If Dean's soul looked a bit different to the other souls in Hell, Castiel chalked that up to the fact that it belonged to a man who didn't belong there. If Dean seemed to understand what he was saying, even though his words were practically killing his newly reconstructed body, Castiel chalked it up to the fact that Dean was to be Michael's vessel and was therefore special somehow.

There was no reason to suspect that Dean was anything other than Dean as there was no reason to suspect that Sam was anything other than Sam.


	3. Sam Awakens

Sam realized that while he'd always been Sam, Sam wasn't all that he was when the light which had flared up from the pit when the final seal was broken all flowed into him. The light which was a Grace that he hadn't realized he'd left behind despite all of the clues that should have been freaking obvious in retrospect filled him nearly to bursting. As it continued to pour into him, he felt as if he would tear apart, but miraculously didn't do so.

He decided to hide everything from Dean after he looked at Dean and realized who his brother was. Knowing how stubborn Dean could be in any reality, it had probably been the only way. It had been so long since his brother had shown him such love, such unconditional devotion, and the thought of its loss hurt. He didn't want that to go away and see the hatred in his brother's eyes that he'd seen when he'd been cast down into the pit ever again. If hiding what and who he was was what it took, he would hide until the stars burned out.

He found himself oddly less inclined to destroy the world than he had been before he became Sam. It was strange how less than three decades could change a decision that had been made over several millennia before, and ease eons of hatred. While he wasn't willing to bow to the flawed and murderous creatures that his father so loved, he could see something of why his father had adored them, and found himself less inclined to go after a bunch of poor schmucks who were just trying to get on with their lives. Humans were flawed, murderous, prideful and sinful, but they also showed such love and compassion that would make even angels weep. It had been with a human heart that he had clung to his brother these past few years, a human heart that would shatter into a million pieces if he were forced to let go.

The fact that Heaven was trying to use him and destroy him in the process also factored into his decision to hide himself away. Hell would freeze over and the demons would start handing out ice skates and lollipops before he allowed his brothers to use him and force his brother who had always been his brother to kill him.

Less than a second after his Grace entered his body, he tamped it down, and hid it away with everything that wasn't Sam. If anyone tried to mess with him, or do something to what and/or who he considered to be his when Dean wasn't around however, they would get one devil of a surprise. Literally.

"We should probably get out of here." he told Dean the instant the lightshow was over.

Several hours later, Sam found himself being tortured by an angel named Zachariah and wondering why a part of himself kept repeating "If Dean wasn't here, you'd be a smear on the wall you little prick." as he tried to breathe without lungs. Soon afterwards, he and Dean were rescued by a revived Castiel whom he'd found himself adding to a mental Do Not Kill list that he hadn't realized that he had.

Soon, they were elsewhere, and Castiel was looking at him with his head cocked to the side as if there was something he didn't understand and was trying to figure it out. Based on the positioning of his wings which were faded slightly for some reason, Castiel was apprehensive.

Wait a second, how the hell could he see Castiel's wings? The damn things had been invisible until the angel had decided to show their shadows to them in that barn which had been rather ineffectively warded up the wazoo when they had first met.

"There is something different about you." Castiel said to Sam after a minute of staring at him in silence.

On one level Sam wondered what it was about him that caught Castiel's attention, while on another, he figured that his little brother had seen something that the others hadn't because he had spent more time with him than any other angel in recent memory. Either way, he decided to put it out of his mind, Castiel hadn't denounced him as Lucifer, so he didn't know. He'd just noticed that something was slightly off, and that was it.

"Y-You didn't say yes right?" Dean asked nervously, looking as if he were trying to look through him, as if he were trying to see whether or not he could spot the devil lurking within him.

"Of course not." Sam replied. It was the entire truth on more than one level. There had been nothing to say yes to. Not since he'd wriggled out of the little hole Azazel had made in the seals that held him in the pit, leaving his Grace behind.

Sam briefly wondered how Dean would react when he discovered that there was nothing for him to say "Yes" to either, and wondered where the hell that thought came from.

Either way, Sam would be staying by his brother's side where he belonged, where he'd always belonged, and he would be helping him stop the Apocalypse. Heaven wouldn't be using him or Dean to serve their purposes, not if he could help it. His reasoning was selfish, but the end result would be one that the Dean he'd spent most of the last twenty someodd years with would approve of.

Besides, he was Lucifer, and there would have to be something seriously wrong with him if he didn't try to screw with Daddy's plan.


	4. Michael's Arrival and Departure

Sam had gone off on a hunt on his own when Dean found himself stuck in the future by Zachariah. In five years, the world had gone to hell in a handbasket. People were running around infested with the Croatoan virus, and he was the leader of a small camp of survivors. To top this interesting little crapfest off, Castiel was a drug addict. Illegal or over the counter, it didn't matter to the former angel who tried to get over the pain of being sundered from his brothers by hopping himself up on booze and pills and losing himself in orgies. It clearly didn't work however.

He'd apparently arrived at camp in time for the final showdown between his future self and Lucifer. Not being something he wanted to miss out on, he invited himself along for the ride with a pill popping Castiel who was staring at him as if he'd never seen him before. The showdown went pretty much as expected, everyone died horrifically and Dean found himself alone with Lucifer who was hainging out in Sam's body. Sam who looked at him with that cold fake pity as he offered to take the conversation to someplace more comfortable "Like home perhaps..."

With a snap of his fingers that stirred something in Dean's memory, he found himself and Lucifer who was wearing his brother standing outside the mouldering wreck that he'd once called home during the happiest period of his life. Deciding that he didn't want to play Lucifer's sick game he ran off towards the park he'd barely remembered and his favorite tree, the Miracle Beech that he'd tried to climb any number of times and had been grabbed off of by his parents. That tree had been a comfort to him when he was small, and had drawn him to it every time he'd visited the park.

When he reached the derelict park, his tree wasn't there, and there was no sign that it had ever been there.

"What are you looking for?" Lucifer asked, coming up close behind him as Castiel was wont to do.

"My tree." he replied, as he kicked the dirt in the spot he vaguely remembered his tree being in.

Lucifer studied him for a moment before backing away in shock and gaping at him like a landed fish.

"You'll find your tree in your own reality." Lucifer finally said after he collected himself, looking at him oddly as if trying to figure out what he was, and why he was.

"My own reality?" he asked. He'd been reasonably certain that it had been his reality, just five years on, but he wouldn't put it past Zachariah to find a worst case scenario just to twist his arm and make him dance to his and Michael's tune.

"That little prick Zachariah dumped you in an alternate universe rather than in the future." Lucifer finally said. "Apparently something must've gone wrong or right as the case may be back home, or he wouldn't have brought you here."

"For what it's worth, I've missed you brother, and am sorry I had to kill you." Lucifer said as he reached out to Dean, every line of his face betraying a longing and a deep and unending sadness. "Every day since then, I've wished that I hadn't done so."

Dean frowned at this. He wasn't Lucifer's brother, and Lucifer had just killed him less than an hour earlier. It was at that point, an instant before Lucifer had touched him, that he'd vanished from Lucifer's side.

"Are you ready to say yes?" Zachariah asked when Dean realized that he was back in his motel room.

"Fuck no!" he yelled.

Zachariah lunged to attack, and Castiel rescued him at the last second, bringing him by the side of the road where he'd been waiting since he'd called him when he'd been trying to sleep.

"Thanks Cas, You mind dropping me off by the car, there's something I need to go and look at." Dean said when he found himself beside the road that Cas had been standing next to for hours.

A while later, he was parking his Impala next to a park he used to play in as a small child. His tree was there where he'd left it when he was four. The sunlight filtered through the leaves beautifully as he approached it, putting his hand against the trunk, greeting it like the old friend it was. In the second before he got his Grace back, he found himself thinking that he should've known, especially after that whole Anna debacle.

The Archangel Michael leaned against a beautiful Beech tree in a small park in Lawrence Kansas, finding that he didn't quite want the world to end, that he didn't want to lose his Sammy, and that he couldn't bring himself to kill the brother who'd had a look of unending sadness in his eyes as he mourned his loss in that other universe. He would fight him because that was what he was destined to do, but a part of him who still loved his brother even after all he had done found itself saying "Not quite yet..."

Perhaps, if nobody knew he was here, things wouldn't move forward...

With half of an insane plan running through his mind, Michael sent a silent apology to his father who he wasn't quite disobeying since he was merely delaying the carrying out of his fathers orders, hid his Grace, and tamped down everything within him that wasn't Dean Winchester, in hopes that nobody would realize. If someone messed with what was his when Sammy or Lucifer wasn't around however, they would find themselves getting an almighty surprise.

Leaving the park, Dean called his brother to tell him that he was alright, and headed to the nearest diner. He wanted pie.


	5. Bobby and the HeWitch

One never quite realizes how slow a car is until they gain the ability to travel to say China for instance in under a second. Dean wondered where that thought and the impatience over how long the ride to Nebraska was taking came from as he impatiently tapped the steering wheel of his beloved Impala which had been given to him by his father while Sam relieved himself on a bush by the side of the road. As he sat there waiting for Sam to finish taking a leak, he told himself it was more about the journey than it was about reaching the destination.

Frankly, aside from the chance to spend more time with Sam, the journey had been rather crappy so far, as had the one to Ohio and that bizarre incident at the museum, especially since they'd been stopped by a number of traffic cops who had given their radar guns incredulous stares when they blew past them at over a hundred and twenty miles an hour along the way. He had five speeding tickets written out to five separate aliases stashed in the glove compartment along with some napkins, a gun, some spare ammo, and half a pack of chewing gum. He couldn't keep the speed up though, and not just because of the cops who were frankly becoming annoying. The car hadn't been made to travel at what for it were such high speeds for such long durations, and was beginning to show signs of strain.

Less than two days after arriving in Alliance, Nebraska, everything was put back to rights including the teeth of that poor bastard who had run afoul of the pliers wielding tooth fairy, and the adorable little Antichrist thing had moved to Australia where he was undoubtedly surfing to his heart's content. If it weren't actually demon spawn, Sam would have said that it was a chip off the old block, since it didn't want to go ahead with Heaven's plans for it either.

Eventually, they were back on the road again, and they found themselves in a town where some witch was playing poker and gambling for years instead of money. A Twenty-four year old man had suddenly died of old age, and the coroner was trying to cover it up with a bunch of scientific sounding bullshit that added up to "I don't know what fucking happened. He just grew old and dropped dead one day.". When they arrived, they went looking for a missing man who turned out to be a philandering douchebag who had gotten a new lease on life. It had been him that had led Sam and Dean to Patrick and the game.

By the time they got there, Bobby was dying of old age despite the fact that he still had a couple of decades left in him. Dean ended up telling a furious Sam to go wait in the car before arranging to play a game with the witch. He gave Bobby twenty-five chips off the bat to restore the years that he'd lost, and told him never to do something that stupid again. Bobby, back to his former age, and none the worse for wear, sat back to watch the rest of the game.

Dean lost, and lost badly.

"What the hell are you?" the Irish witch who was named Patrick yelled.

"What do you mean?" Dean asked.

"I just took fifty years off of you, and you didn't even age a minute!" Patrick the he-witch exclaimed.

"You didn't say yes to Michael did you?" Bobby asked, looking decidedly unhappy with him.

"Uh, not exactly." Dean replied evasively, giving Bobby that shifty look he'd first seen when little Dean had stolen a box of Nilla Wafers from the pantry.

"You're lucky I don't smite your ass." Dean said to the witch before turning to Bobby who was trying to discreetly wheel away from him.

"That reminds me..." Dean muttered before poking Bobby on the forehead, and healing him.

"Please don't tell Sammy about this." Dean said as an amazed and somewhat pissed off Bobby got out of his wheelchair and took a few experimental steps.

"Thanks for the healing, but I'll just be going to cool down a bit." Bobby said as he headed for the door. "You're going to be telling me precisely what you meant by 'Not exactly' later if you ever want to set foot in my home again."

When Bobby left, it was to find Sam standing next to the door waiting either for him or Dean or both.

"Bobby, you're..." Sam started, and trailed off, unable to find words.

"Walking. I can see that ya Idjit." Bobby replied sarcastically, still upset at Dean, and taking it out on Sam since Dean wasn't there.

"How?" Sam asked.

"I made a deal." Bobby said, not quite looking the boy he'd known since he was a small tot in the eye.

"Who with?" Sam asked, looking rather angry.

"Why do you want to know?" Bobby asked.

"So I know who shall suffer eternal torment in the darkest reaches of Hell." Sam replied with a fierce expression on his face that was completely alien to the boy he had known.

"Sam, you didn't say yes to Lucifer did you?" Bobby asked.

"No, of course not, why would you ask that?" Sam asked a little too quickly and defensively for his tastes.

"We're going to be having a talk about this the next time you two Idjits show up asking for something." Bobby said before shaking his head and sighing.

He wasn't in the right frame of mind to be dealing with this right now. He was going to find the nearest bar, get completely smashed, and call Rufus for advice. With the way his life had been going lately, it figured that Lucifer and Michael would turn out to be just like Sam and Dean. At least they liked him, and at the very least, pretended to listen to him. That was one small item in the rather short plus column for the shitfest that this year had turned out to be.


	6. Gabriel

Sam growled viciously and swore in several human tongues. He and Dean had been trapped in some stupid t.v. world by Gabriel. He'd known for eons that the little brat was insane. When it came to the humans, Gabriel hadn't been quite like little Aziraphale who had wanted to cuddle the first two to make the jump to sentience to him and wrap them in packing peanuts or something like that, and had gotten stuck on punishment duty for the last hundred thousand years or so for some boneheaded mistake he'd made trying to help out the first two with a spark of intelligence who Father had decided to name Adam and Eve, but he'd been unduly fascinated with the creatures nonetheless. This not so cute t.v. world was a result of that fascination, and apparently several centuries of running around pretending to be a pagan trickster god.

As soon as he got out of this, and could find the time to get away from Dean for a little while, he was going to beat the shit out of his little brother.

Right now, Dean seemed to be torn between awestruck and dismayed over the fact that they were currently stuck in an episode of Dr. Sexy MD. Surprise, surprise, the little drama queen who was in for the beating of a lifetime was walking down the hall wearing the main character's face.

Before he could say or do anything, Dean had already slammed the little jerk into a wall and demanded that he release him. Gabriel had refused, insisting that they play their parts. He could easily get out of this if he wanted to, but if he did so, it would ruin his relationship with Dean who he wasn't sure whether or not he knew he was Michael when he was forced to explain exactly who and what he was. There had been a much too close a call after he'd done something exceedingly stupid in Cambria, California after he'd seen pictures of a dead Jess look-alike. Fortunately, Dean hadn't asked questions, and they had gotten back on the road.

Some hunters had literally dove out of their way when they ran into each-other during a standard Salt 'n Burn last week though. Based on the look of fear in their eyes, the whole Sam is Lucifer rumor had gotten out amongst the community. So far, nobody had had the balls to try and take him down though.

The whole thing was all very confusing to him. At times, he forgot who he was, completely subsuming himself to the very human Sam persona that felt as much him as the Lucifer personality, and at other times such as when he felt threatened, like now, he was a mix of Sam and Lucifer that was mostly Lucifer. He wondered how Anna felt after her Grace had been returned to her. Had it been something like this where for a moment, she forgot who she was, what she was, and for the rest of the time she was a mix of herself and the human self she had been forced to give up?

It could drive one mad if they tried to think on it too hard. It was easier to let go and not think about it at all.

Dean snarled as he looked around the overbright and kitschy set of the imitation sitcom. Play his part? Play his part? He'd have shown Gabriel his part if Sam and Castiel weren't here. He'd play the part of the older brother who shoved his boot up his little brother's ass before he started pulling feathers.

Little Cas who he was growing rather fond of, and had been fond of as Dean was injured. Thanks to the fact that Upper Management had kicked the little guy out, Cas's Grace was failing him, and Gabriel had taken advantage of that without showing his little brother who had made moves to stop the Apocalypse for him any mercy.

Just for that, he might "Accidentally" stomp on one of Gabriel's wings...

&!&!&!&

The first clue that Gabriel had that there was something off with the Winchesters was three hours after they had freed themselves from the warehouse, and Dean had popped up out of nowhere.

"Oh, Gabrielllllll." Dean, or should he say Michael called. "Guess what. Someone's gonna get their ass kicked, and it won't be me."

What followed was a very vicious and exceedingly painful beating in which Gabriel had his ass literally kicked several times.

The second clue Gabriel got that there was something seriously wrong with the Winchesters was when Sam showed up while he was still nursing his wounds.

"Three guesses who's in for the beating of a lifetime, and the first two don't count." Sam Winchester said with a savage grin that he'd last seen on Lucifer.

What followed was an exceedingly savage beating that had included the tearing out of a number of his primary flight feathers. Even with Archangel powers, those things took weeks to grow back, and he could tell that Samifer there knew it.

"Oh, I almost forgot." Sam Winchester, or should he say Lucifer, said shortly before he left. "If you go running to Dean or one of those dicks upstairs about this, I will kill you."

Gabriel sat there wondering what the hell was going on. Sam and Dean had obviously already said yes, but there was no Apocalypse happening. In fact, they were recruiting in an attempt to stop it. Up until now, he'd been reasonably certain that freeing Lucifer from the pit had been part of some plan of Michael's that involved having the Apocalypse actually happening and destroying Lucifer in the process. He'd wanted to stay out of it because he didn't want to see either of his brothers amongst the First die. Despite the fact that Lucifer had screwed up royally, he still loved him a bit.

The Winchester Apocalypse had been one of several potential Apocalypses that Father had planned out for the end of the world. He'd grown more interested in Sam and Dean when it became more and more certain that that Apocalypse was the one that would be going through, with a couple of modifications here and there.

Actually, now that he thought about it, the current plan involving Lucifer sounded more like something that Raph and Zach would pull. If Michael had gone along with it, it was likely because they wore him down until he agreed that their plan was probably right, and that it was what Father would want him to do if he were there. He'd been torn up enough as it was when he'd been forced to dump Lucifer in the pit when he refused to bow to the humans and rebelled, taking a number of their brothers and sisters with him. In the years since Father had left, Michael had grown cold, distant, and isolated as he ran things upstairs in the old man's stead.

Seeing as he liked the world, and wanted to see it, and the few people he'd come to actually care for in the years since he'd run off to get away from the fighting, and his changed brothers who had slowly come to believe that their Father probably wouldn't be returning, it looked like he'd be joining the "Winchesters" in their little crusade.


	7. Conventions and Explanations

Sam and Dean were going through yet another tedious car ride as they "raced" to the Prophet who had sent them an urgent text message. The trip had gotten boring as hell after a while and Dean wasn't even keeping much of an eye on the road while he let his mind wander and corrected his course as necessary, such as when he sensed that the Impala was getting a little too close to other cars. Based on the constant honking he could hear behind him all the way to Ohio, he was doing something wrong. He didn't know what since he wasn't going too slow, had properly used his turn signals, and hadn't hit anybody.

With a sigh, he moved to pass a car that was going too slow for his tastes in the Fast Lane which was the Fast Lane for a reason. He crossed into the next lane over with three inches to spare, and made it back to his lane with a foot to spare as the two cars he'd left behind honked angrily behind him.

"Slug bug." Sam said before he socked Dean, nearly causing him to crash into the freeway's center divider after spotting a Volkswagen Beetle that had probably started out blue, but was several different colors thanks to the addition of a number of salvaged parts after he'd gotten sick of the "Count the Cows" game and the "Spot the Out of State License Plates" game and the "Spot the Adulterers" game.

"Don't do that." Dean said when he got the car under control. "We could've hit someone."

"So." Sam who was exceedingly bored and had spotted three-thousand five-hundred and fifty-one cows along the way before he'd gotten tired of counting the damned ruminants, spotted eight-hundred and twenty-seven out of state license plates before he'd gotten tired of counting those, and four-hundred and seventy-nine Adulterers before he got fed up with counting those replied.

Eventually the journey ended, and they reached Chuck Shurley's location. Chuck was standing in the parking lot of a reasonably nice looking hotel looking somewhat panicked.

"So, what did you want us for?" Dean asked Chuck when the pulled into a hotel parking lot which contained an unusually large number of black '67 Impalas.

"Um..." Chuck, who was looking rather freaked for some reason, said as he backed away from them slowly.

"I called you here!" a certain Sam fan said cheerfully before she ran up to molest Sam.

"Um, Becky, you might want to get your hands off of the Great Adversary before..." Chuck said weakly, continuing to back away from the brothers, looking as if he wanted to bolt toward what little safety the Hotel behind him could provide him.

"Great Adversary?" Dean asked his brother.

"Um, I started playing a MMORPG a while back, and that's my name on the game." Sam said evasively as he grabbed both of Becky Rosen's wrists in one of his large hands and held her out at arm's length.

"Works for me." Dean replied. "By the way, what's going on?"

"It's a Supernatural convention." Becky replied cheerfully from where she was trying to get loose and molest Sam once more.

"Yeah, no." Sam said, releasing her and turning back to the car.

"Good luck with that." Dean said before he too turned back to the car, hopped into the driver's seat, slammed the door before Becky could dive inside, and pulled out of the parking lot at something approaching the speed of sound.

"Dean, what are we doing at Bobby's?" Sam asked two seconds later.

"Castiel must've given us a lift." Dean replied evasively before yelling "Thanks Cas!" into empty air.

Several hours later, the Winchesters received a panicked call that was actually from Chuck this time. Apparently some real ghosts who had been inhabiting the hotel had decided to gate crash the convention and start killing attendees. Shortly after receiving the call, Dean decided to go take a short walk. Coincidentally, while Dean was taking that walk, the remains of five people who had been buried in Vermilion, Ohio were salted and burned while still lying undisturbed in their graves, and Chuck Shirley's little ghost problem rather mysteriously disappeared.

Hours before the frantic call from Chuck, when Sam and Dean first arrived at Bobby's, Bobby stormed out of the house and demanded his long awaited explanation.

"Remember Anna?" Dean asked while Sam was off in the kitchen making a sandwich after Bobby had finished yelling at him.

"Yeah." Bobby replied.

"Same thing, different angel." Dean whispered, after flicking his senses over to the kitchen to make sure Sam was still occupied with fixing lunch. "Found out what I was after I went poking at a tree. I'm still Dean though, just a little more, you know..."

Bobby sat there silently stunned. He probably should have seen something like this coming considering some of the stories John had told him when he was drunk, but then again...

If he followed his thoughts to the logical conclusion...

His thoughts abruptly slammed into something big. He'd helped raise the devil.

He'd helped raise the devil.

As he tried to wrap his mind around this little revelation, Satan walked out of his kitchen munching on a sandwich that he was in his right hand while holding an open beer in his left.

"Hey guys, what's going on?" Sam asked as he took in the serious look on Dean's face and the shell-shocked one on Bobby's.

"Nothing." Bobby said as he tried to match up the image he had of little Sammy with everything he'd heard about the Morning Star.

The funny thing was, when they were kids, if you had told him that one of the Winchester children was Lucifer, he would have picked Dean. That kid had been like Junior Healy from Problem Child when his father was away. Sam had been the quiet, mild-mannered, studious one who minded him.


	8. World of Whoops

Dean found World of Warcraft to be surprisingly addicting which was probably why he hadn't noticed the fact that he'd spent an entire week as The Mikester wreaking havoc across Azeroth, and storming dungeons with the Great Adversary by his side. Unlike most gamers who spent an entire week online, there was no detritus of dirty dishes and food wrappers surrounding him, he didn't smell particularly ripe, and he wasn't about to drop dead from exhaustion. The only clue that he'd gotten that he'd spent a little too much time online was when an very angry looking Castiel snatched his laptop away from him and threw it against the wall.

"Hey!" he yelled as the computer shattered.

"While you were playing that, that...game, someone, presumably Lucifer, massacred the entire town of Carthage, Missouri and summoned Death." Cas said, sounding absolutely furious.

Cas looked so adorable when he was angry. Dean found himself wanting to gather little Cas up into a hug and give him ice-cream or something like that. Castiel was probably the most tolerable little brother out of the lot of brats Dad had created after him, Gabe, Raph, and Luce. The fact that Cas was trying to help him rather than be a dick about the whole Apocalypse thing had shifted him up to favorite brother.

What Cas said finally registered through the whole Cas being adorable thing.

"WHAT? !" Dean yelled jumping up from the seat he'd occupied for an entire week while an increasingly annoyed Bobby started treating him like part of the furniture, even going so far as to dust him at one point.

"Is something wrong Dean?" Sam asked, not even looking up from his own computer where the Great Adversary was storming a dungeon despite the fact that The Mikester was no longer by his side.

"Lucifer went and raised Death!" Dean yelled as he started pacing and working out the kinks in the wings he refused to acknowledge he had.

"Huh, Death's in this game?" Sam asked from where he was staring at his computer screen blankly.

"No Sam, he is, or was in Carthage, Missouri which, by the way, was completely massacred while we were dicking around on the internet!" Dean replied, still yelling, pissed at himself for completely forgetting about the Apocalypse.

"Oh...shit." Sam said as he finally logged off when what Dean had yelled registered.

It was at that point that Gabriel walked in the door wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a shit-eating grin.

"Hi boys, I heard you screwed the pooch, and I decided to drop by to help." Gabriel said as he summoned an Almond Joy from a convenience store three states away. He could've made his own, but he couldn't get the taste quite right for some strange reason.

"Why would Dean fornicate with a dog, and why would you assist him?" Castiel asked, giving Gabriel his birdlike "I have no effing clue what the hell you just said or why" look.

"Now I see why you guys keep him around." Gabriel said before slinging an arm over Castiel's shoulders and pulling him in for a brotherly half-hug, not letting go when Cas struggled, trying to pull away. "He's adorable."

"That he is." Dean said as a half-awake Bobby came down the stairs to see who was making all of that racket at three a.m..

"What are you idjits doing?" Bobby asked as he watched Sam and Dean watch Gabriel tussle with Cas.

"Um, we were playing World of Warcraft until Cas and Gabriel dropped by." Sam said.

"I thought this place was warded against angels finding it." Bobby said as the newest visitor took the opportunity of the distraction Bobby had caused to pin Castiel to the floor.

"Phone book." Gabriel replied from the floor where he had Cas pinned in a head-lock. "Flip to the Yellow Pages, look for Singer Salvage, and voila, address."

"What're you doing here?" Bobby asked the trickster angel.

"I came to help stop the Apocalypse that the two dimwits here forgot about." Gabriel replied as he released Cas.

"World of Warcraft is kinda addicting." Sam said from his spot at Bobby's desk.

"Tell me about it." Gabriel said. "I once spent an entire month...Uh, I mean, that's no excuse for forgetting something so important and letting all of those poor people die Lucy."

"What did you call me?" Sam asked, giving Gabriel a look that, if it could kill...Let's just say that Bobby would have spent the rest of the day cleaning Gabriel chunks off of his walls, furniture, and books.

"Nothing Gigantor." Gabriel said, rapidly backpedaling.

Sam gave Gabriel another Look.

"Fine, Sam." Gabriel finally said, looking subservient for about half a second before springing back to his usual self.

It was at that point that Bobby's home phone rang.

"What?" Bobby asked.

"What about Carthage?" Bobby asked a couple seconds later.

"WHAT? !" Bobby yelled.

"Who was that Bobby?" Dean asked when the old hunter finally hung up the phone.

"That was Ellen." a rather pissed looking Bobby said. "Apparently while you two idjits were glued to your computers, someone massacred the entire town of Carthage, Missouri."

Dean winced.

"I think it's about time I went for a walk." Dean said as he turned to leave the house.

"Uh, me too." a slightly cowed looking Sam said the instant Dean was gone.

If the entire town of Carthage, Missouri happened to be resurrected with absolutely no memory of what happened while Sam and Dean were on their walk, they had absolutely nothing to do with it. That's their story and they were sticking to it.

Bobby spent three days fielding non-stop calls from hunters about the massacre and subsequent resurrection of Carthage Missouri.


	9. Two Mundane Hunts

"A mental hospital?" Sam asked as the Impala pulled into a parking lot of a mental facility in Oklahoma.

"One of dad's friends needed a favor." Dean said from where he was steering the car through the lot while reading something that was written in Russian.

"What's that you're reading?" Sam asked.

"Some story by Tolstoy. I started off on War and Peace at the beginning of the drive and decided to read the rest of his stuff. This story isn't half bad. Pity it never happened. Chances are that there would be a lot less douchebags in heaven if something like that happened to some of the little bastards. Of course, there'd be a lot less douchebags in Heaven if they were even a little bit like the Michael in this story." Dean replied from where his nose was in a book that he was very slowly paging through while the Impala wended its way through the semi-crowded lot.

Sam snatched the book out of Dean's hands and flipped it to the story his brother had been reading, which was called What Men Live By. Sam rapidly flipped through the story.

"Sonuva-!" Sam exclaimed when he finished the story.

"Something wrong Sammy?" Dean asked.

"Nothing." Sam bit out angrily as he crumpled the hardbound book in one hand, resolving that if he ever found out where Father was hiding out, he would strangle him.

An hour later, a Wraith was dead, and a shell-shocked Dr. Fuller began to question his own sanity after he watched his two newest patients vanish into thin air. Off in the distance, he could hear a squealing of tires as a car screeched out of the facility's parking lot.

"Well, that went well." Dean said as the Impala sped down the highway at slightly subsonic speeds, causing a Highway Patrol officer to spill his coffee as his car tumbled in its wake when it blew past.

With that hunt over, Sam and Dean were hard pressed to find something to do as there was a slight dearth of signs of the Apocalypse to thwart, and Death had pulled a vanishing act after Carthage. Fortunately, Christmas and all of the distractions that came with it was coming up. Sam and Dean simultaneously and independently decided on the same present for Gabriel.

On Christmas morning, Gabriel awoke to find a pair of stockings at the end of his bed. He emptied one of them. Coal. He emptied the second. Coal as well. Flaming hot coal which promptly set his bed on fire.

Like all things, Christmas too passed, as did New Year's. During an absolutely pointless poltergeist hunt in Massachusetts that was done at the behest of yet another friend of the family in early January, Sam blinked as he felt something try to take over his body. Shrugging, he followed the spell to its source and found a trio of teenagers.

"Kids." he muttered as he torched their spellbooks and other occult items after putting the fear of Lucifer into them.

Based on the way the little brats had shit themselves, he had a feeling that they wouldn't be trying magic again anytime soon, like say, within the next eternity or so.

He'd nearly slaughtered the brats for their presumption, but some form of Human mercy that he'd picked up during his years as Sam had stayed his hand. After reading that short story a while back, he found himself wondering if that hadn't been Father's plan after all, found himself wondering if he hadn't been deliberately let out of the Pit in the manner that he had been in order to be taught a lesson. The Michael in that story however had disobeyed out of a sense of mercy and kindness, and had been left on Earth to learn the lesson of "Dad was right all along". His Michael never had such a flaw, and would have never disobeyed, even if it would have actually cost those two little girls their lives.

The lesson on what it is to be human however...The lesson on what it is to be human is a painful one which he wished he'd never learned. He'd learned it though, and had changed because of it. He could feel that he was different in those moments when he wasn't being Sam for Dean's benefit. Dean who was his Dean and so much more, and could never be Michael in his eyes, because then they would be forced to fight, because the minute he acknowledged Dean to be Michael, Michael would be forced to stop pretending that he was "Just Sammy".

In many ways however, his Dean wasn't his Michael. The brother he had known before Michael had fallen and become human had been merciless, and obeyed Father in all things. This one was still Daddy's little soldier, but he didn't always obey, and he had shown mercy where Michael would have shown none. Dean had sold his soul for him, died for him, and gone to Hell for him. Michael, who believed it was his job to destroy him, would have done none of those.

Michael wouldn't have gotten him beer and a back scratcher for Christmas either.

Pulling himself out of his musings, Sam folded back in on himself, left the traumatized teenagers sitting there in their waste, and went to where his brother was hanging out in their old babysitter's basement. They had a witch to salt 'n burn.

Soon, the witch was dispatched, and the Winchester brothers were back on the road again. Behind them, a small dorky teen named Gary was informing his shocked family that he would be entering the Seminary as soon as he graduated and becoming a priest.

Their cries of "But, you're not even Catholic!" went unheard.

In two other households, a girl named Nora and a boy named Trevor informed their stunned families of similar callings to the cloth.

"You see Ralph, I told you that whole Satanism thing was a phase he would grow out of." Trevor's mom said when Trevor had told his parents that he planned on becoming a minister over dinner.

"Yeah, the Devil's a total prick." Trevor said. "He told me that if I tried stealing his body again, he'd send me straight to the anal rape section of Hell "Do not pass Go, do not collect 200 dollars" whatever that means. I wasn't the one trying to steal his body, it was Gary."

Trevor's parents simultaneously dropped their forks, turned to stare at each-other, and gave each other the other kind of seafood, the kind with two Es.


	10. The Song Remains the Same?

Dean had somehow managed to fall asleep despite the fact that it had been impossible to do so for the last several months, and had been having a pleasant dream in which he had been playing with his brother back before everything had gone all pear-shaped, and Dad got mad and kicked him out when Anna showed up.

"Oh, my...Zachariah is going to shit a brick when he finds out." Anna said when she looked around at her surroundings.

"Finds out what?" Dean asked in a tone that seemed to state that if Zachariah found out anything that he didn't want him to know, a certain someone would suffer torments that made what Hell had to offer look like a day in the park.

"That I, er, completely failed in the clever plan to get you to say yes to Michael which I only agreed to go along with in order to escape and help stop the Apocalypse using any means necessary, including going back in time and killing your parents in order to prevent Sam's birth, and possibly even yours, and I can't believe I just said that..." Anna said all in one breath.

Dean looked at Anna in anger and disgust.

"I can't believe that I loved you." Dean said. "That I...Dear Dad!...I had sex with..."

Dean promptly woke up, leapt out of his motel room bed and started vomiting in the nearest toilet.

"Dean, why is there a toilet in the middle of the room?" Sam who had been watching an infomercial on t.v. asked.

"Me...Anna...Sex..." was all Dean had managed to choke out by way of explanation before he started vomiting again.

"Oh." Sam said before turning back to the television, pausing, and looking somewhat squicked. "Ohhhhhh."

"Hi guys!" Gabriel said when he turned up from wherever it was he wandered off to when he wasn't bothering the...er, helping out in the stopping of the Apocalypse. "I need to have a little...Why is there a toilet in the middle of the room?"

"Dean had sex with Anna last year." Sam replied, looking slightly disgusted, as he changed the channel to another infomercial that was marginally more interesting than the last one.

"And that...Ohhh. Yeah, that's a good reason to have a toilet in the middle of the room." Gabriel said, looking slightly ill himself. "You'll have to bring the toilet along with you Dean, because I need to talk with you for a minute."

"So, what's this about?" Dean asked a minute later when he and Gabriel were somewhere isolated. The toilet had not come along for the trip, and would later be found by a rather puzzled member of the motel cleaning staff who would stand there and rather stupidly say "Why is there a toilet in the middle of the room?" after Sam and Dean checked out the next day.

"I figured out how you...became you." Gabriel said after looking about to make sure they were truly alone, since little pitchers, and little Castiels who were on a hunt for God had big ears. "I believe that time travel may have been involved."

"Unstable loop?" Dean asked.

"Yep." Gabriel replied as he created and started licking a giant lollipop (which was rainbow colored and blue raspberry flavored, for those who want to know).

"So, where do I..." Dean started, before Gabriel poked him in the forehead.

"...Go?" Dean finished, finding himself on his old family lawn at some point before he was conceived.

He went to the door, and knocked on it. After a couple minutes of waiting, it was answered by John Winchester who was wearing way too much cologne for some reason.

"Hi dad." Dean said before pushing his way into the house, stopping in the living room, and pulling things out of the bag that Gabriel had apparently shoved into his arms before sending him to the past.

He then used the items from the bag to summon a certain Archangel who somehow managed to get John Winchester to consent to be his vessel in under five minutes.

"What did you...? What the...? Why...?" Michael said.

"Son of a bitch wouldn't say yes, so I was forced to use alternative methods." Dean replied. "You've got five minutes, now hop to."

"Five minutes...You mean?" Michael said.

"Four minutes-fifty." Dean said, rather pointedly looking at his watch.

Michael left to do what needed to get done. John Winchester was left a drooling wreck upon his departure.

"Unbefuckinglievable." Dean said before healing the elder Winchester.

"Bye Dad." Dean said before cleaning up the mess he'd made and leaving.

"What the hell just happened?" John asked no-one in particular, as no-one else was there.

After a moment of thought, John raced back to his bedroom and grabbed the joint he'd been smoking before he'd answered the door, and the bag of pot he'd hidden in the nightstand, and raced into the bathroom and flushed the both of them down the toilet.

"Knew that deal was too good to be true." John said as the joint and the baggie vanished into the sewer system. "I don't even wanna know what kind of plant that really was."

Meanwhile, a certain Archangel was trying to figure out how to tear out his Grace. It wasn't like he had someone who had fallen before to provide an example of what to do.

At Four Minutes, Fifty-nine seconds, he was finally reasonably certain he had an idea as to what he was doing, and with a couple milliseconds to spare, Michael and his Grace were streaking out of the sky and headed towards Lawrence Kansas where one Mary Winchester was walking out of a grocery store where she had been buying snacks for herself and her husband.

By the time she got home, unaware of the extra burden she was now carrying, she was disappointed to discover that A) all of the weed was gone, and B) it might not have even been weed in the first place.


	11. Little Cupid's Terrifying Valentine

"That's just nasty." Dean said as he read about the couple in Sioux Falls who'd eaten each-other to death. "Just figures that something like this would happen around Valentine's day."

Dean was still rather upset about the whole "Anna" debacle, and slightly sickened due to that whole human morality thing that placed "siblings" especially younger siblings in the no go category which he'd absorbed in the years since he'd...Yeah, not going to think about that. He was Dean, always was, always had been just like Sammy was and had always had been Sammy. One wrong thought around Sammy, and the whole house of cards would just...

Unfortunately, despite the fact that Dean couldn't even think of the word "romance" without remembering...he had a job to do, and this couldn't go uninvestigated, no matter how badly it turned his stomach.

"Well, that's one way to be together forever." Sam who'd been unusually clingy since they'd arrived in town said a few hours later as he examined the hearts of the two victims.

Eventually, after they'd let Castiel who seemed to have a recently discovered burger fetish be "helpful" they were seated at a restaurant waiting for the Cupid to show and start doing his work. Neither Sam nor Dean were certain if Cas knew who they were despite the number of anvils that had been dropped over the last few months, as Castiel hadn't let on either way, and the little guy was good at obfuscating as well as being cute. Another disturbing possibility that had occurred to the both of them individually at different times was that since Castiel had been booted out of Heaven, his senses had been dulled and he hadn't been able to realize that they'd gotten their grace back, despite the fact that he'd immediately recognized Gabriel.

Gabriel had mentioned to Sam and Dean separately that they'd pinged on his radar as Michael and Lucifer and that he'd rationalized it away as them being their vessels after all...

Eventually, their helpful little brother who'd been sent out to hunt for dad since he needed something useful to do with his time since he'd been looking depressed because he'd been kicked out of heaven for "disobeying" had gotten the Cupid to manifest itself.

"Yeah, no." Dean said as he backed away from the naked vessel who was coming in for a greeting. He wasn't in all that much of a mood to pretend to be happy to see his ditzy little Cupid brother who'd gone and ruined his dinner which had consisted of pie, pie, and more pie by running wild through the restaurant and turning a pair co-workers who were married to other people that had gone out for drinks after work into soulmates.

"So, what's the big idea?" Sam growled at the Cupid who was enthusiastically greeting Castiel who didn't look all that happy to see him either.

The Cupid turned to look at Sam, and his eyes comically widened. He then looked at Dean as if he hadn't seen him before. He looked back at Sam, then at Dean, and then he nervously swallowed.

"Oh, SHI-" the Cupid said as he vanished into the distance.

Sam and Dean looked at each-other, waiting for one or the other to make the move. They had a Cupid to catch. One of them did at least.

"I have to go to the bathroom." Dean said before jogging into the direction of the men's room.

As soon as he was out of the room, he vanished after the little Cupid who hadn't yet gotten more that fifty miles away. If either Sam or Castiel had noticed that the entire exchange following the Cupid's departure had taken a millisecond, neither of them said anything as he was on his way out the door. He caught up with the panicked Cupid somewhere over Kentucky. The little guy was panicked as hell, and being slammed to Earth after he was nearly in orbit, having been too panicked to make his way into heaven, didn't help matters any when it came to the little angel who'd been acting so far out of bounds it wasn't funny.

"Crap, crap, crap, crap, crap, crap, crap." the little Cupid said as he pulled himself together and flinched under Dean's gaze. "Michael's joined _**HIM**_! I'm gonna get smote, I'm gonna get smote, I'm gonna get smote..."

"You say a word about me or Sam to anybody, and you will get smote." Dean growled at the tiny Cupid. "Now, what's the big idea joining random people together like that? There were at least two couples that consisted of people that were married to other people by my count, and you made an all-male couple as well. The fact that one of those two was already gay doesn't matter."

"Um, you know, love and romance and...Why in father's name did I do that?!" the Cupid said, apparently thinking clearly for the first time in a while. "It was like my job was my entire existence, and I wanted to do nothing but my job despite the fact that only one of those couples was on the list. Sure, I like my job, who wouldn't? But..."

"Don't worry little brother," Dean said, feeling angry on the little Cupid's behalf. "I'm gonna find whatever the hell did that to you, and I'm gonna kill it, and then I'm gonna stomp on its remains, then I'm gonna bring it back from the dead, stomp on it some more, and then I'm gonna kill it."

"You're the best brother ever!" the little Cupid said as it launched itself at Dean and enveloped him in a big hug.

"Now remember, think of me as Dean and Sammy as Sam, and not a word of this to anybody." Dean said as he gently pried the Cupid off of him.

"Okay, I promise." the Cupid who seemed to have the attention span of a gnat since it seemed to be focusing its attention on a ladybug said with a slightly nervous waver in his cheerful voice.

Dean turned and made his way back to the restaurant, leaving the little Cupid who was intently watching the ladybug crawl along a leaf behind. He had a monster to kill.

An hour later, a thoroughly pissed off Dean who had an entire pie in one hand and a disgusted Sam who'd spent most of his time begging for attention and approval from anyone who'd give it to him found and dealt with Famine whom Dean stomped, brought back, stomped some more and killed just as he promised he would do.

"Dude, anger issues much?" Sam asked as he watched Dean stomp on Famine's remains once again as he ate his twelfth pie of the evening.

"I made a promise, and decided that in this case I'd go above and beyond." Dean replied, carefully not looking at Castiel who'd been thwarted by a tray of raw hamburger meat.

Deciding that Famine hadn't quite learned his lesson on why you didn't mess with his family, Dean brought him back from the great beyond with a snap of his fingers and started stomping on him again.

As he did so, a little Cupid who was afraid to go back to heaven in case...Stood there and shuddered as he watched. He'd always abhorred violence, and now he had just had his face rubbed in the fact that the greatest and most noble of his brothers was also one of the if not the most violent of them all, just like Lucifer. Up until now, since Michael had been so high above him that he'd been more of a concept than a real being to him since one so lowly as him had never gotten the chance to actually meet him, he'd kind of been able to ignore the whole going into battle and punishing the wicked thing...


	12. Welcome to the Asylum Castiel

As Dean stomped on Famine, Castiel wasn't sure whether or not he should be pissed with Dean or himself. He'd suspected something was up since Carthage, but like an idiot, he'd continued to deny it since acknowledging it would mean that Dean had said yes and he'd defied Heaven for nothing. Since he spent so much time away from Dean searching for his Father so that he could stop the Apocalypse before things got too far out of hand, it was easier to deny things, since he wasn't there to see them because he was so far away. Seeing Dean bring Famine back from the dead more than once however was more than he could ignore.

What the hell was all that stuff about defying fate and following one's own free will if Dean was just going to say yes to Michael...?

"Dean, are you aware that you've been bringing Famine back from the dead?" Sam said, looking as if he'd been refraining from commenting, but finally had to speak up around the fifth time that Dean had returned Famine to the afterlife.

"I have?" Dean - or should Castiel say Michael - said in false surprise. "Wow, I just thought that he was just a stubborn SOB who refused to die...I wonder who else I can bring back."

"Nobody." Sam said firmly. "Humans can't bring people back from the dead Dean."

"Oh, yeah, right. That's right isn't it?" Dean said. "Let's get out of here and forget this ever happened."

"Agreed.:" Sam replied.

With that, Sam and Dean turned to leave as if one of them hadn't entirely shattered Castiel's world view and destroyed everything he had thought he'd been working for with a simple snap of his fingers. As they left, Castiel longed to pound Dean into the dirt for making the sacrifices he'd made completely worthless. There was no way that he could beat Michael however, so he refrained, quietly simmering as he followed his "friend" out of the restaurant.

Very pointedly not looking at Dean, he turned to Sam whom he'd been trying to forget existed since the beginning when he'd pulled Dean out of Hell. Looking, really looking, rather than directing a comment or two at the other man while focusing his attention on Dean, he could now see that there was something seriously wrong with Sam. It was almost as if the younger Winchester brother was folded in on himself. Almost as if the younger Winchester brother had very carefully folded himself into something approximating a human shape.

Curious, very curious...

Looking back at "Dean", he realized that Michael had folded himself into a more neatly done human form that looked almost exactly like the Dean he'd always known, but more somehow.

"What was the point of everything if you were going to say yes?" Castiel grumbled as his anger got the better of him.

"Huh?" Michael asked, giving him a look that was so purely Dean that if he hadn't known, he almost would've believed it was Dean.

"What was the point of everything if you were just going to say yes to Michael? Why did I do any of this?" Castiel asked.

"I didn't say yes to Michael and I'm never going to." Michael said, giving Sam a rather shifty glance.

"Yes you-" Castiel started.

"Castiel, leave it." Michael said, growling his name before barking his order.

He flinched. Dean almost never called him Castiel, preferring to shorten his name to "Cas", and hearing that name come from the man he'd sacrificed everything for...

That had been the last straw. Launching his weakened form at the creature who had taken his friend from him, he aimed for the wings that were pulled incredibly close to the human body that the Archangel occupied. Michael had been waiting for him though, and the other angel had clotheslined him before knocking him to the ground and pinning him down.

"I'm just going to go over, er, somewhere while you to sort out this whatever the hell it is out." Sam said slightly shiftily.

A moment later, Sam who'd moved faster than was humanly possible was gone.

"You've joined Lucifer?!" Castiel exclaimed in surprise when realization had finally dawned on him.

"I have no idea what you're talking about Cas. Sam's Sam like he always was, and I'm Dean like I always was, and there's no way in hell that I'd ever help Lucifer destroy the world." Michael replied, letting him up.

Castiel wasn't entirely sure what to make of that curiously specific denial. While Michael had said he wouldn't help Lucifer destroy the world, he had never once said anything about not having joined Lucifer.

"Now Cas, I'm going to go see where Sammy has gone off to. Next time I see you, you'd better not be spouting any wild theories about me being Michael or Sam being Lucifer." Michael said in a seemingly nice tone that carried an undertone of "Disobey me and I will smite you".

Michael left, leaving him wondering exactly what the hell was going on. Moments after Michael left, Gabriel appeared.

"Welcome to the insane asylum." Gabriel said as he handed him a bottle of something called Everclear.

"I'm not in an insane asylum." Castiel said as he accepted the bottle wondering what 190proof meant.

Gabriel snorted at this as he summoned a candy bar.

"May as well be." Gabriel said as he unwrapped the candy. "I see you finally decided to come out of denial regarding Michael and Lucifer."

Before he could come up with a reply of any sort, the Cupid from earlier timidly approached them.

"Gabriel, sir, if I may...What's going on?" the rather nervous and shaken looking Cupid asked.

"Short version," Gabriel said, swallowing the bite of chocolate he'd been chewing on. "Zachariah and Raphael are being dicks and Michael finally decided that he wasn't going to go along with it, and that he'd finally be his own man, er, angel even if it means stopping the Apocalypse that they'd gotten rolling. When it comes to Lucifer...Well, when have you ever seen him follow any plan that Heaven has made?"

"Oh." the Cupid said, looking uncertain whether he should be relieved or not. "Which side are you on sir?"

"The side that doesn't end with us going back to the same old same old World War III for Sunday dinner each week." Gabriel replied. "There was a reason I left after-all."

Castiel winced as he remembered the rumors of the fights that tended to break out in the upper echelons since Father had vanished. If that had been all he'd had to look forward to, he would've left as well. The question was, should he try to make his way back to the side of Heaven since working with Michael meant working with Lucifer and accepting whatever punishment they would give him, or should he be stopping the Apocalypse like he'd promised Dean he would help him do before Dean had vanished and Michael had taken his place? The right thing would be to go home, but he'd sworn that he'd help Dean and stay by his side...


End file.
